'Great Firewall' marks Flickr its next victim

'Great Firewall' marks Flickr its next victim

21st Jun 11:16
China's Internet censors are upsetting a new generation of Web-hungry users who, far from aspiring to cyber dissidence, merely want to check friends' photos, for example, reports NewScientistTech.
Access restrictions in China have found a new casualty in Flickr, which was for the most part blocked after images of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre appeared.
"Once you've complained all you can to your friends, what more can you do? What else is there but anger and disillusionment?" said Yang Zhou, a Web surfer who expressed frustration with China's "Great Firewall" after trying to access some holiday images on the photosharing site.
China employs thousands of human surveyors to monitor the surfing habits of over 140 million Internet users. It is their job to remove content that may push moral or political sensibilities. Adding to that are a complex system of filters.
Frustrations with the Great Firewall, however, are expected to be borne quietly.
"Many educated people feel they can accept the current status quo because it doesn't have much impact on their daily lives […] They have been living with government propaganda for over 1,000 years," says Liu Bin, an IT consultant for BDA, Beijing.
Others may think differently. Days after Chinese censors blocked Flickr, links to browser-based plug-ins and filter proxies popped up across blogs and chat rooms, taking advantage of a short window of time to aid savvy citizens before censors withdrew the information.
Source: Marketing VOX